Rioting at Walmart...sic semper vinum...this too shall pass (maybe)

Yep, hello, it’s Tuesday…thank goodness. Yesterday was horrible, just horrible. After posting on Monday about Oklahoma Freedom Day in which I welcomed the new and “historic” liquor laws taking effect, I decided to make the journey to Walmart to exercise my new-found freedom by purchasing some real beer and a few bottles of wine.

What a mistake that turned out to be!

There I was pushing a cart toward the aisles in the back where they have their beer coolers and wine shelves hoping for some odd reason that no one I knew would notice that I was there to buy alcohol – you see what living under a repressive regime does to you? I actually felt guilty about even being in the store!

I turned the corner on the wine aisle and found it was filled with people, some of whom were wearing masks to hide their identity (Baptists I’ll bet). And, here’s the thing, most of the shelves were already bare! People were fighting over the remaining bottles. Gadzooks!

There were two employees at the end of the aisle staring helplessly at the melee. I asked if they planned to start restocking the shelves but guess what…there’s nothing to stock with.

The one employee broke down in tears and between sobs was able to tell me that Cosmic City is at the end of the Walmart supply chain and it would be at least two weeks before they got more stock.
“I don’t feel happy,” she said as her colleague tried to comfort her.

I immediately jumped into the middle of everyone scratching and clawing to get a bottle of something, anything. I was blindly clawing at the shelf hoping to make contact with something resembling a bottle. I soon realized that I was wedged between two women both of whom had resorted to punching one another in the face.

Ah, contact! I grabbed the neck of the bottle at my fingertips and attempted to extract myself without receiving a punch. As I came free, I noticed one of the women had a tattoo that read, “Life is Too Short to Drink Expensive Wine” on her bicep.  Oh, the humanity!

I moved further down the aisle and this time dove in between two people on a pair of those electric shopping carts who were having a bumper car shoving match trying to push each other back from a sole bottle of sparkling wine on the shelf in front of them. I waited until their batteries were depleted and then leaped over the cart carrying a dude whose hairy belly protruded from beneath a neon green t-shirt that was four sizes too small for him.

I began making my way back to my cart at the end of the aisle. The one employee who had been weeping before now lay on the ground, EMTs were there trying to revive her.

To tarry would have meant certain death at the hands of the savages still fighting over the few remaining bottles. I hurdled over the gathered first responders and dropped my two bottles into my cart. It was then that I noticed for the first time what I had grabbed.

One was a bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill (who knew they still make that?) and the other was a really cheap bottle of Andre’ Cold Duck. Great…two bottles of sweet cheap wine. I hate sweet cheap wine. Then it occurred to me that I could combine the Cold Duck with the Boone’s Farm and have a sparkly sweet, albeit refreshing cocktail that poured over ice undoubtedly would have the desired effect. I determined then to stop being such a wine snob and be grateful that I could even purchase wine in a Walmart.

I love Oklahoma! No, really, I do!

I’ll just have to set my expectations much lower, that’s all.
Before leaving I stopped over at the beer aisle to scope things out. It was even worse. An equally angry mob of were there grabbing 12-packs from the cooler and then swinging elbows to get sufficient room to back out with their prize. I swear I saw someone waving a handgun around at the far end of the aisle.

I decided to pass on the beer.

So, if you’re reading this and work for Walmart Corporate, would you please ship more wine out this way? Anything would be fine. Maybe some of that (horrid) purple grape wine they make in Rogers, Arkansas (I’ve sampled it…makes great rat poison).

Apparently, our expectations are low and getting lower all the time.

​That is all!
 
​

---